The main character in this series is Pat Gallegher, a failed seminarian, retired forensic psychologist, disgraced college professor, and now a jazz cornetist in a dive bar located off Toulouse Street in New Orleans' French Quarter.

Gallegher is also a hulking presence who sidelines as a collector for loanshark named Leduc to pay off his own sizable gambling debt. To balance the shaky scales of his own brittle karma, he also performs 'favors' for friends, and friends of friends.